A costume suit refers to a large human-wearable costume. The costume suit is made of special clothing or material, covering a whole body of a person inside to make the person transform into a fictitious creature, such as an anthropomorphized animal or monster. For such a representation, the costume suit is widely used in various events, entertainment shows in amusement parks, TV programs, and others.
On the other hand, a full-scale restoration model of a large animal such as a dinosaur is often presented for exhibit in various fairs, museums, and others. When moving images of a large animal are needed, realistic movements can be achieved nowadays with computer graphics (CG), which are frequently used to create special effects for movies and others. However, when realistic movements of a large animal are needed in amusement parks, theme parks, or theatrical performances on stage, a full-scale costume suit is needed.
Conventionally, since a costume suit modeled after a large animal such as a dinosaur has a longitudinally and laterally long and large shape, it is hard to keep balance, and forcible movement incurs the risk of toppling over. Therefore, manufacturing such a costume suit for practical use is difficult. As a result of diligent studies to solve this problem, the inventors have found that, at a position approximately corresponding to a equilibrium point of the costume suit in a hollow formed with a body part and a leg part communicating inside with each other, a frame pack to be carried by an operator who fits in the hollow and operates the costume suit is installed as being fixed to a skeletal part of the costume suit, thereby achieving realistic movements with extremely stable operation even if the costume suit measures approximately six meters in full length, and this invention has been granted patents in various countries (Patent Document 1). However, in the invention described in Patent Document 1, the number of operators who fit in the costume suit is restricted to one. Therefore, the costume suit can be applied only to a bipedal animal. Moreover, if the costume suit becomes larger, its load cannot be supported by a single person and, furthermore, it is difficult to walk around safely.
As far as the inventors know, prior examples describing a method of manipulating a large costume suit hardly exist. There are only few known documents, such as Patent Document 1 describing “the person may operate independently by looking at monitor images of a video camera, which is installed in an adequate position of the costume suit, or may operate by following a direction of an outside conductor via radio communication.” and an article introducing the winning of “Tokyo Venture Technology Award 2009” by the product of Patent Document 1 describing “an operator uses two inner monitors and wireless communications to ensure safety” (Non-Patent Document 1).